We all want the best for our parents, especially when they reach an age where they need at least some level of assisted care. Unfortunately, few such facilities come cheap and many can salvage those parental bank accounts if no one is paying attention. Provided below are several pieces of advice to preserve the state of your parent’s assets, like their home or vehicles.
Annuitize The Liquid Assets
One tip when looking into how to protect assets from a nursing home is to check if their state checks against annuities for Medicaid qualifications. If you happen to luck out, you can have their assets shifted into an annuity and have them qualify for a nursing home that is covered by Medicaid without eroding their assets.
If your parents’ state does account for annuities for determining whether someone qualifies for Medicaid, you can still shift assets into an annuity but have to go without Medicaid’s services for some length of time after transferring the funds. What is annuitization? Well, it is the process that converts the money you’ve invested in an annuity into regular payments as part of your retirement plan.
Secure Their Money With an Irrevocable Trust
You may have heard of a living trust, but the problem with living trusts is that they are vulnerable to various costs. An irrevocable trust, by contrast, is immune to being hit by the costs of a nursing home. While the principal put into an irrevocable trust cannot be retrieved, all of the interest and dividends that the trust receives over time are safe and secure.
Look Into a Pour-Over Trust
This type of trust protects a person’s assets from being taken while still allowing transfers of the funds by the people with access to the trust. Make sure that your parents’ will cover a testamentary trust that will cover for a surviving spouse. While some portion of the funds placed within the original trust will pour over into the estate of the late spouse, the inclusion of a testamentary trust will protect that money from seizure by the nursing home to cover your parent’s bills. This situation means that both of your parents can have some financial protection should one of them pass on.
Educate Your Parents About Modern Fraud and Scams
5% of adults have been victimized by monetary scams and fraudsters, leaving them in a very dangerous position with little to no way of recouping the loss. This is why you must discuss the three main scams that focus on senior citizens.
1. Medical/Insurance Scams. Because every American over the age of 65 is eligible for Medicare, scammers will try to pass for health representatives and ask for personal details. If the scammer’s mark takes the bait, the scammer then uses that information to bill Medicare and take the money.
2. Telemarketing/Phone Scams. The elderly purchase over the phone twice as likely as the average person and the lack of a face-to-face transaction or even a paper trail makes it very challenging to trace the calls. Sometimes the buyer’s name overlaps with similar scammers, causing a cascade of repeated scamming against the same person. This happens most often when money is being sought by a false charity, disaster recovery, or when speaking on behalf of the financial needs of a hospitalized relative or child.
3. Internet Fraud. While the elderly are slowly adapting to technologies like the internet, scammers are faster and have figured out ways to hit the elderly with automated scams. These net scams may manifest as virus-scanning software that asks the viewer to download a fake program that will give everything the scammer could need to get to your parents’ passwords and other info.
Other examples of these sorts of scams include e-mails or phishing messages that appear to be from legitimate companies, or even the IRS, at first glance but the message asks the recipient to update and/or verify the user’s personal information. The moment that someone gets duped into clicking the featured links included in such messages is the moment that the user’s computer and data can be exploited as much as the scammer wishes.
Conclusion
The best way to protect your parents’ money is to keep them educated on current financial scams, establish a trust that suits their needs, and to annuitize their assets if able.
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